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Thursday, January 11, 2007

If you'll indulge me with a brief digression from the usual subject material, I offer this one off-topic post, and promise to get the blog back on track in short order. Thanks and a tip of the hat to Jesse Walker and others at Reason's Hit & Run blog for taking note of the passing of Robert Anton Wilson.

"Robert Anton Wilson taught us all that “the universe contains a maybe.” So maybe there is an afterlife, and maybe Bob’s consciousness is hovering around all of us who were touched by his words and his presence all these years. And if that’s the case, I’m sure he’d like to see you do something strange and irreverent — and yet beautiful –- in his honor."

A tall order. The beautiful is beyond my ken, and strange and irreverent ... well...

On his blogger profile, Wilson listed his occupation as "Mind Fucker." I, for one, was seduced on a blind date with his Illuminatus! trilogy.

It happened in the late seventies. After listening to me rant about a Council on Foreign Relations conspiracy, or maybe it was a Kennedy assassination conspiracy, or perhaps the "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" Masonic conspiracy later ripped by Dan Brown, my brother suggested I read RAW's Illuminatus! He told me it was science fiction, my favorite genre. It was a trick.

While reading Illuminatus! - Robert Anton Wilson managed to surgically insert the "23 Enigma" into my brain. I found the notion to be ridiculous of course. Completely absurd. Laughably stupid. Patent nonsense.

25 Oct 2006But in this particular example, I have only one thing to say to Scott: "23". If all you do is look for the number 23 all day, you are going to find a lot of them. Sometimes the 23 you find means something. Sometimes it does not. ...

21 Dec 2006At precisely 4:22 PM PST, 21-December-06,the earth leans a maximum 23 degrees off of our orbital plane, and then starts leaning back. It is the moment that we in the northern hemisphere begin to observe the return of the light. ...

17 Oct 2006The next edition of the Carnival of Divided Government will be posted one week from today, at 11:59 PM PST Monday October 23. Submit your blog article at carnival of divided government using our carnival submission form ...

I just noticed an interesting coincidence - there are exactly 23 "23's" in this post (and two "twenty threes").

It was decades later that I began to realize that there really is a vast conspiracy, and Robert Anton Wilson was at the core of it. It seems that many of his readers were writers, screenwriters, journalists, authors, directors, designers, and bloggers. It seems that many, after reading the books, began to deliberately insinuate the number 23 into their work. Consequently it is no longer possible to distinguish whether you are noticing the "23's because you are looking for them, or because they really have been selectively integrated into everything by Wilson's co-conspirators.

Then, with that realization, I knew for certain that one could sit alone at a typewriter, or in front of a computer, or with pen and paper, and create ripples in reality that never stop expanding.

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